Image of Obama bowing to Khamenei is doctored
- Published on June 24, 2025 at 23:14
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Sums it up," says a June 22, 2025 post sharing the image on Facebook.
The post comes from conservative comedian Terrence Williams, whom AFP has previously fact-checked for spreading other misinformation.
Similar posts spread across X after Trump said June 21 that the US military had executed a "very successful attack" on three Iranian nuclear sites, including the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordo. The operation, dubbed "Midnight Hammer," added to a more than week-long Israeli campaign that also targeted Tehran's top military brass, fueling fears of a wide regional conflict.
The US president announced a fragile ceasefire in the war between Iran and Israel June 23 after Tehran fired ballistic missiles at a US base in Qatar.
The escalation came almost a decade after Obama and other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council sealed a deal with Iran called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The agreement placed significant restrictions on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement in 2018 during his first term, and his second administration had been seeking to chart a new deal before Israel's June 13 strikes on Iran.
The US president had long criticized his predecessor's signature foreign police achievement and campaigned in 2016 on torpedoing the deal.
But the image purporting to show Obama bowing to Khamenei is a fake, with two separate photos edited together to create a composite picture that has circulated online for years.
Reverse image searches revealed that the original photo of Obama is a famous shot, captured by then-official White House photographer Pete Souza, of the Democrat bending over so that the young Black son of another White House staffer could feel his head and see if they had the similar hair (archived here and here). Souza took the photo in May 2009 -- years before Obama signed the Iran nuclear accord in 2015.
An AFP photojournalist snapped the picture of Khamenei even earlier, in August 2005, during a ceremony to inaugurate former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served until 2013. In the real photo, Ahmadinejad is standing to Khamenei's left -- not Obama.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about Iran here.
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